Museum of Contemporary Ideas

Abstract

Within the Conceptual Art movement recent artists such as Marcel Brooderthaus have developed an investigative research strategy that uses fiction and appropriation in order to critically reflect upon the art world’s institutions such as the museum. This practice-based research aims to intentionally blur the boundaries between fiction and fact, and operates via many of the same devices of the institution it seeks to subvert. Peter Hill’s contribution lies in a doubling of this strategy so that the museum itself becomes an umbrella organizer of concepts and ideas alone. This extends the research of conceptual art and brings it into a critical relation with contemporary museum studies.

The Museum of Ideas is a cumulative project that utilizes the institutional artifacts of the art world – press releases, advertisements, magazines – in order to create an elaborate inter-disciplinary Museum. The Museum exists virtually but not physically. Whereas other practice in this area relies upon visual spectacle, this project creates the fact-fiction of the Museum via the more sober medium of print and design. This results in an elaborate creation using minimal components of documentation, contributing to new understandings of an interdisciplinary conceptual-visual art field of research.

The Museum of Ideas is informed by Hill’s PhD research into ‘Superfictions’: fictional ideas presented in the realm of visual art. The significance of the Museum of Ideas is evidenced by its inclusion in the 2002 Biennale of Sydney: The World May Be Fantastic at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. The work has its own entry in Wikipedia and is permanently available online.